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By Brian Pitts

Enterprise Record

The Mocksville Senior Legion baseball team suffered through a miserable game at Rowan County on June 28, except …

Hunter Daywalt did a fine job holding down first-place Rowan over the final four innings.

But that was one of the few positives in a 7-0 road loss. It was the fourth setback this season to Rowan, which beat Mocksville on June 1, June 5 and June 22.

Mocksville was handcuffed by righthander Jake Blevins, who worked a two-hitter for six innings. The Pfeiffer recruit recorded four 1-2-3 frames, covered six innings in 63 pitches and lifted his record to 5-1.

“We saw (a pitcher) that hadn’t thrown against us (in the other three meetings), so we didn’t know anything about him,” assistant coach Jacob Tutterow said. “He was wild (early) and we were undisciplined. We struck out swinging on pitches in the dirt.”

Indeed, Mocksville had a chance to stagger Blevins in the top of the first. But after Parker Aderhold walked, Rowan turned a double play. The DP was all the most important when Dan Loyd followed with a double and Blevins plunked Ryan Thiel. But Blevins got out of the inning unscathed and retired 11 in a row after beaning Thiel.

Immediately, Rowan’s offense tore through the visitors. In the bottom of the first, three singles and a double amounted to a 3-0 score. Rowan doubled the margin in the second as it piled up seven of its 11 hits in the first two innings.

Meanwhile, Mocksville mustered two hits all night. Lawrence Hancock’s one-out single in the fifth was Mocksville’s first hit since Loyd’s first-inning double.

Mocksville (7-15 overall, 4-6 Southern Division) finished with more errors (three) than hits and dropped its second straight game.

The good news was Daywalt out of the bullpen. The rising sophomore at Davie worked around three walks and held a 23-win opponent to one run over four innings.

“Hunter did great on the mound,” Tutterow said. “He shut them down, and honestly the one inning they got a run off him (in the sixth), they shouldn’t have. He was excited every time he came off the mound because he hadn’t been pitching as well as he did in this game.”

Here’s a happy development amid the darkness of the first shutout loss since a 9-0 decision against Rowan on July 15, 2021. Hancock was hitting .103 (3 for 29) through 13 games. At that point, who’d have thought he’d be at .226 when Mocksville left Catawba? He got there by hitting .375 (9-24) in a span of nine games.

Notes: Rowan (23-7) extended its winning streak to eight and raised its division record to 7-0. … Mocksville fell into a four-way tie for third place with Mooresville, Stanly County and Davidson County.